There's an article today at abc.com that looks at recent trends around net-based pay-for services and the smattering of paywalls from News Corp to the NYT that are up or threatening to be put up, and speculating that this could be the beginning of a trend. Of course, a YouTube video rental site and a few large publishers putting up paywalls will make zero difference to the "free internet" on their own. But if they're successful, it could spark emulation. But could this be a trend that could snowball enough to change the nature of the net?

I have nothing against paying for content as so long as they give me value for money and better still, actually sell it to international customers. Its been how long since Kindle has been launched and Amazon still don't ship it to New Zealand?! come on, its clusterf-ck stupidity such as that which is the reason why things don't even take off. A horrible CEO treating the US as the only market worth being concerned about thus blocking out the potential customer base from a over a billion down to a few hundred million.